32 FILé5 R p o o 0 " .: . g :i:?Ð .. . . , f , : , : " {; , ;; t- ; , ;;: n :'''.: , '':':''':, "'<< :' ...1 <:) ,/." ' .1 :;: , \:: , ; ;+i. . " ,_ , . , ' , , , > , ; , ' , : " , . , k " , f;; , ! '7 ," , :: , : : , , , :\':--" -- 1[':, ";, ',:,,,:,;;,{f.f " .., ,.. I ' .. $c ' . ,.. ri: , , ' , t , ; , m/":":" " . " , % ,, ' , " : ,r ' (;f;:i:n; '-' i:;.",t: '\, .::::.=: .: :1(:. AD rJ', "".." L ,:',n: ,,>:' '; : . ,, : : ;;:::}.. '.f: ??: :::::.:: THE MAYOR. OF FUT ANI understand Tony worth a damn. He spoke the English of Tom Daly and Henry Armetta, strictly a stage guinea dialect. Captain Mike Davis, of the London Irish Regiment, leading our party of three war correspondents-a Scotsman, an Australian, and myself- was anxious to know the disposition of the Germans in the hills and towns around F"utani, which lay in No Man's Land, on the path that the four of us hoped to cover between the Eighth British Army and the Fifth American Army. l""ony Cuda did not see us as correspondents with a sort of B-picture Hollywood stunt for a mission, which was what we were. To him we were Allied avengers pursuing the grand strategy, as well as his own ends, and he addressed Captain Davis with over- whelming power and affection. "I can't make out a word the buggeJ is saying," said Davis. "V\That's the troub', Mister John?" said the Mayor of Futani earnestly, clutching me by the shoulder. "I don't understand him good. You I under- stand good forcause you an ericano." The Mayor thereafter was polite and gentle, but resolute, in his determination to pursue negotiations in three styles of English, with me as the pivot man. 'Vhen the Scottish reporter, McDowell, speaking more clearly and neutrally, it seemed to Ine, than any of the rest of us, insisted on addressing C uda directly, Tony beamed on him for a moment, then gave hin1 the brushoff and turned back to Ine. It was flattering, as I say, but I could not conceal from myself that the fact of the Mayor of Futani's having three thousand dollars in the Fourth National Bank of 'Villiamsport slightly colored his attitude toward the two Al- lied' forces. the Army, but the range of Amer- ican habitat of the Italians-from- the-States had been wide and their distribution in Italy was patchy. For instance, Tony Cuda, the Mayor of Futani, a hill to.wn w here I happened to spend some time in the course of my work as a war correspondent, had lived in Philadelphia and '/Villiamsport, Pennsyl vania, and in his town there was a woman from Hazle- ton, Pennsylvania, and one man from Allentown and another from Wilkes-Barre. On the Sor- ren to peninsula, the represen ta- tion was largely New Y ork- N ew York City and upstate places like CornIng and Amsterdam. In Caiazzo, a village north of Naples, I found a Connecticut colony. At the sight of American troops, these pilgrims over- flowed with American memories, at the expense of the life around them, how- ever sensational. "I ran a god dam nice restaurant in New Haven; lotsa college boys come to my place," said John J. Pannone, of Caiazzo, as soon as he made himself known, and it was an- other ten minutes before I found that he had been practically an eyewitness, the day before, of a German atrocity we were on the trail of. "I seen things here '-' yesterday you wouldn't believe them, you couldn't sleep," Pannone said final- ly. "You could get drinks in my place in New Haven, you understand, besides eats. Good beer." The British soldiers in Italy accepted this species of Italian tolerantly, but at first' they were surprised to meet it.. being as unfamiliar with Italian emigra- tion to America as they were with a naval battle which was fought, as they now sometimes heard it alleged, on a sort of American mere or sluice called Lake Erie in 1813. 'Vhen they cared to, the British could argue with justice that must of the Italians we liberated jointly were more deeply aware of Eng- land as a power and an influence than of America. But the Peetsborgh vari- ety is something else again. He is ex- plosive and single-track in his rapture for America, and I was flattered, for no good reason, because Tony Cuda could never understand English as rendered by Englishmen and always called on Ine to interpret. This inability to under- stand worked both ways. The British unit with whom I travelled could not J.I\, ,-%' u, \_ .u ,. .' ,';; Þ F . :;j' ': , N.:' ",}: ..y'K , ' ...:....i .:; . ..... .::::.. '. ..:..' ..:.;, .:<:./: ' '/.?: ij: :.j/ ... 1 é' ',;,:,,/ ,:\ 'Ñt;:\ : :J$ '''<::; ALLIED progress in the war in Italy .rl. began to freeze some months ago, but by then the campaign had left Tony Cuda far behind, and I can say things about Tony and his hos- pitality now that were better left unsaid at the time I knew him. Mainly, how- ever, it isn't the way his grapevine sys- tem nursed us through German outpost lines in the wild Salerno hill country, smelling of bandits and light opera, that makes me remember Tony. It is that to me, at least, he is Exhibit A in what might be called the "Peets- borgh" phase of the war. This phase began in Sicily, but it came of age on the Italian mainland. It's hard to see how anything exactly like it can have occurred in war be fore or will occur again. The ingredients are rare. Amer- ican soldiers, most of them on their first campaign abroad and going into for- eign lands, into Europe, into the cra- dle of Europe, with a good deal of sp:ritual diffidence, in spite of the guns in their hands, were suddenly hailed in every village by characters of various ages who brandished passports, snap- shots, letters, or all three, and said loud- ly and happily, "Hello, I'm glad you come. I used to live in the States. My family, she's in Peetsborgh now." This delighted the Americans-even the ones from Iowa, Oklahoma, and Texas, to whom it seemed strangest, though they quickly learned to take it in stride. It's a tendency of American soldiers over- seas to revert to nonchalance with the least possible delay, and before long they were slapping Italian peasants on the back with fatherly encouragement and saying, "You from Peetsborgh, G " ,,)) Iuseppe r "Peetsborgh" was a watchword in N E,i\RL Y all the characteristics of the Italians-from-the-States were united in rrony: the stage dialect, the craving for American cigarettes or ci- gars, the survival of a few elnphatic .iAmerican profanities, the record of ser- vice in the American .f\rmy in the last war, the violent tirades against Fascism. "That sonum-a-heetch F ascismo, she's keep me, she don't let me go," said Tony. The chart of Tony's international Inovements followed a pattern familiar all over Sicily and the mainland of Italy. He went to .iAmerica as a young man,